Should 11-year-olds walk to school alone?
A neighbor called this morning to discuss an apparently delicate situation that has arisen about which 6th graders are walking to middle school with whom. While briefing me on the problem at hand (trust me, it’s not worth an explanation), she mentioned that while she was allowing her son to walk to school with friends, under no circumstances was he allowed to walk to school alone.
Huh? Is the 15 minute walk to the middle school, which goes right by the train station as it fills with morning commuters, really fraught with danger? And up against whatever evil awaits, are two skinny, clueless, bed-headed 11-year-olds really more protection than one?
She mentioned the mugging of a 7th grader that happened mid-morning on a snow day last year and said she’d heard of other “frightening incidents.” When she mentioned another mother who was not allowing her 6th grader to walk alone, I could feel my resolve wilting. Was I now going to have to tell my son he couldn’t walk alone, and thereby introduce to him the idea, just as I was encouraging his burgeoning independence, that our seemingly extremely safe suburban neighborhood wasn’t really safe after all?
After I got off the phone, I started thinking about peer pressure, which has been on my mind during this first week of school. And it’s not the peer pressure that my son might face in middle school that’s getting me down, but the pressure I’m feeling from my peers — not to be cooler (way too late for that), but to be more worried and protective.
Just when I was feeling that my 9-year-old’s larger than usual class size (24 children) will not ruin all hopes for his future success and happiness, along comes a mother telling me she’s arranging extra tutoring for her son because “at that class size, there’s no way the teacher is going to give him the extra enrichment he needs.”
Just when I was feeling good about my 11-year-old walking to school, along comes a more vigilant Mom to whip up my fear. Until that phone call, I’d figured that if my son’s pal oversleeps one morning, he’d be fine walking on his own. Ours is a quiet residential neighborhood, where my son knows someone on every block.
My first instinct was to get on the phone and poll some other mothers to find out if they were also afraid to let their children walk to school alone. But my reporter instincts (or maybe my free-range parent instincts) kicked in and I called the local police station instead. I had a nice chat with the officer on duty, who told me that, no, statistics do not show that our town has grown more dangerous lately and that the incident my neighbor mentioned was the only one he knew of since joining the force a year ago. “Look, I can’t promise you that nothing will ever happen, but a lot of parents around here tend to worry a lot more than they have to.”
So now I’m faced with one worried mother and one reassuring cop. If I go for a second opinion, do I seek out another parent or a more experienced police officer? Or — and here’s a radical thought — do I just trust my instincts and my knowledge of my town, where I’ve lived for 11 years, and let my son walk alone when he wants to?
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It depends on your son and his common sense, no? If he is well-trained how to sense/spot/avoid trouble, he should be fine. There is a sweet spot between paranoia (the other moms, perhaps) and laissez-faire. I went many places alone when I was that age, female, in Toronto, a big city…but have never been the sort to dawdle to talk to strangers or whatever else might have exposed me to someone creepy.
I recently overheard a (rightly) very upset mom, on her cellphone, who lives in Rye, in our county, as you know, trying to comfort her 13 year-old — who had been approached, as many kids have in that town, by someone driving up close to him…someone he did not know — as he was walking home from school. That’s scary as hell.
I agree with Ms. Kelly, if you believe your son has the common sense then encouraging independence is the way to go.
Martial art masters will all tell you (adult and child) the best way to handle a mugger/kidnap situation is to distract the perp then run. I have friends who have used this technique and survived unscathed. It can be as easy as pointing, saying “Look” then running the other way.
Here’s another school walk survival tip: drop the books, they’ll just weigh you down.
My son may have common sense, but you’re right that he has to develop his “instincts” and for that he may need some tips/reminders, like not to tune out on his I-pod, how to be aware of his surroundings etc. The challenge is to get him savvy without scaring him silly!
In response to another comment. See in context »I know the pressure of co-parenting with other moms and it has advantages and disadvantages. For example, it helps that my friends and I have the same curfew for our teenaged sons. It’s less pressure on them and we avoid a lot of arguments.
But sometimes we have to go our own way and trust our instincts. I let my 12 year-old daughter go to the mall with friends, but I balked when it came to dropping a group of them off at the Lincoln Park Zoo. I didn’t want to influence what the other parents had decided – but in my opinion, my daughter wasn’t ready for that. Boy, was she mad at me.
Regarding your situation, is it possible that your friend might have had other reasons than her son’s safety in mind? Middle school can be tough on kids socially – do you think she just wanted to secure a friend for her kid to hang with?
Marjie, there’s definitely a chance that social stuff was coming into play with my friend’s nervousness, but today I polled another mother of a 6th grader and she said she wouldn’t let her son walk alone either, and they live literally around the corner from the school. She mentioned “all these incidents of kids being mugged for their stuff, their ipods and cellphones” but didn’t seem to know of any specific cases other than the one I already mentioned. I do think parents are right to be cautious but I do think that one incident sends parents into a tailspin and soon everyone is talking about this as if it’s a horrible trend overtaking our generally safe town.
In response to another comment. See in context »I don’t have kids but one challenge these days is the insanely competitive nature of parenting, esp. in affluent suburban areas, like where you and I both live.
What matters most is your values and those of your son. The most danger I have ever found myself in, in this lovely little “safe” town was when I let down my guard and overruled my instincts. I was in a great deal of danger, esp. when the police and DA blew me off. Learning these skills early is important.
Your kid needs to develop his instincts as well.
There is an excellent book called The Gift of Fear, by a security expert. He explains how and why to carefully observe and judge the safety your surroundings instead of nodding through them with an Ipod, oblivious and trusting. The “authorities” are not standing by your side 24/7 to protect and save you, whether Mom or cops. You’ve got to use your own eyes and brain as well.
You’re right about that — silly to send a kid out to be “independent” without equipping them to deal with it.
In response to another comment. See in context »And, maybe this is too out-there, but if your kid is a target for theft for his or her fancy gadgets, leave them at home! Really. When adults travel in/to certain places, they know (or find out the hard way) not to wear jewelery or carry a camera or carry only a small amount of cash.
It’s being prudent and it means you are not only fully aware of your environment — you have responded to it thoughtfully to protect yourself. I think this insane “don’t walk alone” is not helpful to kids; if your nice town is seen as that dangerous, what is this teaching the kids about “danger” or how to discern it?
My mom traveled the world alone and I’ve done much solo travel worldwide as well, heeding her lessons about how to stay safe. As I said, the worst crime of my life happened right here at home — when I was basically not paying attention. Paying attention is a life skill you need everywhere!
It’s much easier to be the more restrictive parent than the more lenient parent, but it’s worth it to your kids to push the other parents a little when they’re getting reactionary. Your points about teaching your children about independence and awareness (and I’d throw in things like navigation and timeliness as well) are important and shouldn’t be ignored for the perception of safety. I think it’s great that you called the police station and maybe another step would be to ask someone from the police to come speak to a group of parents to help you all assess the actual danger.
Of course you don’t want to scare your son, but you also don’t want his “feeling of safety” to be more important than his actual safety. Part of feeling safe anywhere is knowing that you’re practicing safe behaviors. Surely you’ve taught your son to wear his seatbelt in any car and he’s learned about (in)appropriate touching and to wash his hands after a sneeze – I don’t see that teaching him street-smart behavior is any different.
I am not in any way suggesting that we blame the victims of crimes – even the most clueless and unsafe among us don’t deserve blame for violent attacks of any kind. That said, if you can teach your son how not to be a target you reduce his chances of ever becoming a victim, both of accidents as well as crimes.
It is definitely harder to be the more lenient parent because even while encouraging our children to be more independent, we hear the voices of those more worried mothers in our heads. Yesterday I encountered yet another mother who is frightened by “anecdotal” evidence of child muggings when this “evidence” is really just the articulated fears of other mothers. Everyone puts more faith in fear than in the facts.
In response to another comment. See in context »I have two kids. I have noticed a lot of parents, usually mothers, are living in a state of paranoia. I don’t say this lightly. I encounter many people who are irrationally fearful. It is sad, really. Parental involvement is important and good, but parents have gone completely overboard with micro-managing their kids. The result? The children lack independence, an ability to entertain themselves, and skills to figure out basic life problems. There has been a lot of focus on paranoid parents not letting their kids walk to school, and I find it crazy that kids are not allowed to, but I have noticed a more troubling aspect that happens inside the home. Parents have become servants for their children. They make special meals, they push their children, to the point of burnout, in academics and extracurricular activities, but they don’t emphasize independence, responsibility, and just having fun. A quick example: when my eldest child eats at our house or is a guest in another house, she is expected to help clear the table and load the dishwasher. My daughter is a pre-teen, I have seen parents express fear that she will hurt herself. So the lesson that they depart: let the parents coddle you, you’re not responsible to handle a task, a meal was provided but you are not expected to help in anyway.
We are helping to create a generation of very interesting kids whose parents expect a lot out of them academically, but I fear that in other ways there is very little expected of them. The kids are missing out on a lot of important life skills and it is all based on parental fear, which (in my experience) has little to do with reality.
I don’t have kids but if I did, they and I would be wildly unpopular because I think teaching boys and girls alike to treasure the privilege of growing independence is crucial. You can’t possibly (not you personally, the generic you as a parent) expect a child whose had the beejezus scared out of them about how terribly dangerous the world is to suddenly — how? when? where? — develop a sturdy, reliable sense of their own judgment if they’ve been hovered over 24/7. I truly pity the college teachers and administrators, let alone the employers, who’ll have to cope with ths sort of over-protection down the road once kids age.
It’s also really sort of ugly and narcissistic that parents in wealthy suburbs are freaking OUT when it’s much more likely that a little kid in a lousy urban neighborhood faces very real danger but doesn’t have a stay-at-home mommy cruising beside him in the Escalade every step of the way to school.
I was raised — as maybe some of us in my age group were — to trust my instincts, to pay attention to my surroundings and to venture into the world, even as a child, with the idea that, yes, there’s some danger, but: 1) you can run fast 2) you can scream, whistle, call a cop (we did not have cellphones or GPSs) 3) you can think carefully about what looks like a scary place and stay the hell away from it.
Amen, Caitlin.
lineargirl talks about the peer pressure among parents and it really exists. Letting your kid walk around a suburban block is seen as a radical decision, and I have to justify letting my kids doing anything that is not tightly-monitored. Quick anecdote: my kid enjoys riding her bike around the neighborhood. (She usually rides alone because the other kids apparently are not allowed outside unsupervised.) I bought my daughter a bike lock the other day. I have never seen her so excited. She can now ride her bike to the local bookstore or ice cream parlor, lock it up and feel independent. I have talked with her about dealing with strangers and other issues. Do I worry about her? Sure. But I want to raise an independent, rational person who does not need a 24/7 concierge. I feel that being restrictive and fear-based is a disservice to my children. And you should see the smile on her face when she is riding her bike, and when she comes back home, an independent, strong girl.
Independence is like a muscle — develop and use it or lose it.
I can’t overstate the importance of young girls, especially, learning to feel safe and behave safely. If they, as so many women are taught to do, always look to others to “protect” them, the very person who steps up to do so outside of their own family might be doing so for with some very frightening, even criminal intent. I speak from very bitter firsthand experience in this regard.